In 1492, Columbus fetched up on an island in what was soon to be called the West Indies. The intrepid Italian navigator was disgusted on entering a native hut to see skulls hanging from the ceiling. The warlike Carib Indians, he found, practiced anthropophagy - not only killing their enemies, but eating them as well.

Columbus dubbed these people "caribales," from which we derive the words "cannibal" and "Caribbean."

While the European newcomers scrupled at the consumption of human flesh, they more than matched the natives at the sport of warfare. Within a short span cannibalism was eradicated, if only because the Caribs were, too.

Therein lies the moral dilemma at the heart of Hans Askenasy's book, Cannibalism: From Sacrifice to Survival, which purports to be the first comprehensive history of "the last taboo."

The quandary is this: Why does a culture that kills so freely and efficiently (ours), find the eating of human flesh so repugnant?

This question may appear on first glance to be itself repugnant, and even worse, stupid. Not so, when you consider that cultures which reportedly eat people find the waste of good meat to be immoral.

Askenasy quotes a story about a 19th century chief of the Miranhas, who reportedly told European visitors: "You whites will not eat crocodiles or apes, although they taste good. If you did not have so many pigs and crabs, you would eat crocodiles and apes, for hunger hurts. It is all a matter of habit. When I have killed an enemy it is better to eat him than let him go to waste. ... The bad thing is not being eaten, but death if I am slain. ... I know of no game which tastes better than men. You whites are really too dainty."

I should hasten to note there that there is considerable controversy over whether headhunters such as the Miranhas chief ever really ate people at all. Askenasy cites the work of anthropologist William Arens, whose 1979 book The Man-Eating Myth argues that cannibalism has never existed on a large cultural scale and is instead a calumny used by one group to demonize another.

But the issues posed by the chief, whether or not he existed, have relevance nonetheless. The population of the Earth is sure to reach a point in the near future, if it hasn't already, at which humanity can no longer feed itself. Historically, Askenasy points out, the most common reason for human beings eating one another is not cultural, religious, sexual or perverted - it is hunger. Time after time, when people have been starving due to famine or war, they have turned into cannibals.

Askenasy gives special attention to the siege of Leningrad, when Nazi forces surrounded the Soviet city for 900 days in an effort to starve it into submission. Soon all dogs and cats had disappeared, and some people went mad with hunger, killing and cooking their children, husbands, wives. In the Haymarket, meat was available and customers were careful not to inquire as to its provenance.

To prove that in time of great hunger people - almost all people - will resort to cannibalism, Askenasy also details cases involving plane crashes, shipwrecks and other extreme situations in which people ate human flesh for survival.

Among the historical examples Askenasy discusses are the infamous Donner Party, a pioneer band stuck in the Rockies, and Alfred Packer, a frontiersman who apparently ate human flesh for survival but acquired a taste for it. Askenasy also examines the incidence of cannibalism in the actions of sexually motivated thrill killers such as the now-late Jeffrey Dahmer and his Russian and Japanese counterparts, Andrei Chikatilo and Issei Sagawa.

For all the detail he gives to the historical incidence of cannibalism, Askenasy is more interested in the cultural obsession that people around the world seem to have with the subject. He surveys movies, books and newspaper articles dealing with the subject. He notes that most religions have key cannibalistic symbolism at the heart of their beliefs and rituals.

Like it or not, the most sacred act of Christianity, communion, is a matter of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus.

I wish I could say that Askenasy's writing was in keeping with his research, but that is not true. He throws forth jumbles of facts and half-digested concepts, admonishing the reader in an annoying tone to think critically. He doesn't seem, behind his facade of amused irony, to have bothered much with critical thinking himself, let alone arranging the book in a coherent fashion.

I'm not asking Askenasy to provide answers to moral imponderables, but I do expect to be able to detect an analytical intelligence behind the posing of the questions. Instead of giving us a comprehensive survey of an important and underexamined subject, Askenasy has merely provided fodder for better writers to build upon in the future.

And one other thing. Askenasy never adequately addresses the most obvious reason for the taboo against cannibalism. It is the same as what motivates us to bury the dead and leads us believe that God made humans in His image. The human body is animated not merely by life, as any animal, but by the illumination of intelligence, self-awareness, emotion - what the religiously inclined term the soul. We prohibit the eating of human flesh out of reverence for the soul that once inhabited it.